A tiny tweak. A surprising result. Here’s how changing a single letter reshaped how people will see my app.
May 2, 2025, Arvid Renestam
Sometimes, the biggest changes start with the smallest tweaks.
When I first named my app “Lerp” I was proud of the reference. It came from linear interpolation—a concept familiar to developers and game designers. It sounded neat. It was short. And it felt clever.
But over time, something didn’t sit right. Not with me, and not with how I wanted the brand to feel.
The biggest issue was what came up when you searched for “Lerp.” It turned out to be far from a blank slate. The majority of results were related to linear interpolation which, of course, also had been my own source of inspiration for the name. The problem was that these results had very high authority and ranked far higher in search engines than my own website. It didn't end with math either—there's also Emil Lerp, inventor of the chainsaw, and there’s a biological meaning too—lerps are weird sugary shelters made by insects. Clearly, none of these associations matched the image I wanted for the app.
To make things trickier, a company in Sweden was already registered under the name Lerp. It was on its way to liquidation, so the name might have opened up eventually—but waiting for that felt risky and unnecessary. Maybe the name just wasn't for me, you know?
And when I really started to think about it, I realized that I wasn't even that happy with the name to begin with. It wasn’t that people mispronounced it or struggled to spell it (although some did try to spell it with a “u”). It was mostly that the name just didn’t feel quite right. It leaned too technical and lacked the playful, approachable vibe I wanted the brand to have.
There were also a few small design quirks. The “e” didn’t balance quite as nicely in the logo as I’d hoped, and getting the design to look just right felt almost impossible. Though, this was more of a minor annoyance than anything else. But overall, there were quite a few reasons to start thinking about a name change.
On a whim, I swapped the “e” for a “u.” And instantly, everything felt better.
“Lurp” had a friendlier, bouncier feel. It still nodded to the original name, but it sounded more fun and less stiff. And the visual balance improved too—the “u” just worked better with the other letters and the design process of the new logo went flawlessly. I think “u” is just a very friendly letter, with its roundedness and basic shape.
Even better, the name was a clean slate. No science jargon, no inventors. Just a few silly Urban Dictionary entries, which honestly made me laugh more than anything else. It had just the right amount of weirdness without any real baggage.
Best of all? It sounded exactly the same—at least in English. That made the transition feel natural—no need to re-educate anyone on pronunciation. Just a simple tweak that made a big difference. In fact, the spelling had just become a tad more straightforward. The Swedish pronunciation did change a bit but that was never really the intended way of saying it anyway. Though, it did take me a while to stop saying “Lerp” out of pure reflex.
And as luck would have it, the domain I was already using, lerp.it, had a perfect counterpart: lurp.it. That made the switch even smoother and kept the brand consistent online.
A few friends weren’t sold on the new name. They liked “Lerp.” It sounded sharper, more technical and serious, and they didn't see a need for change. I totally get that.
But for me, “Lurp” was a name I could get behind. It felt like something I could grow with. It didn’t fight me every time I tried to design around it. It didn’t feel like a compromise. It felt right.
When changing the domain name, I basically completely screwed up the SEO. I'll start from the beginning so you're up to speed.
I had the domain registered in Google Search Console so that Google would know exactly what my website had to offer. However, because the “lerp” keyword was so well-established, I barely managed to get a spot on the first page of Google Search. The hope was that this would all change when I went through with the name change.
However, I forgot to register the “change of address,” meaning Google wouldn't actually know that the site had moved. Instead I just deleted the domain and registered the new one. This way, the new website would have to go through the tedious process of getting crawled and registered in GSC all over again. The key here, even after the various mistakes, was to make sure that all pages of the old domain redirected to the new one. But it still took time, I think about two or three months, before the dust had settled. Let me tell you, those were some long months!
The result was very close to what I had hoped. Lurp.it consistently ranked in the top four, for the “lurp” keyword, and first for more specific searches. Gaining domain authority simply takes a lot of time, and I would eventually reach that top spot, even for the base keyword, though a lot of work and effort was put in along the way.
This small change taught me more about naming and branding than I expected:
Would the app be any different if I stuck with “Lerp”? Probably not. But how I felt building it? That changed immediately.
This wasn’t just a branding tweak—it was a mindset shift. I want Lurp to feel fun, approachable, and a little quirky. I want people to smile when they see the name. I even want it to have a mascot (his name is Lil’ Lars, by the way).
So yeah, it’s just one letter. But for me, it made all the difference.
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